In 1992 the civil war in Sudan resulted in the murder of many adults, numerous young women being "used up" and more than 20,000 young boys who escaped and became orphans in Kenyan refugee camps. Once again religious ideals become twisted, as Islamic Fundamentalists believe their fellow citizens that practice Christianity or Animism are their mortal enemies.

Nine years later in 2001, some of the boys, now young men, begin immigrating to the USA. Two teenagers, Peter Dut and Santino Chuor are given advice by an elder to "…not act like those boys with the baggy jeans." All they have to do is work and study hard in America and it will be like being in heaven. Heaven can be a relative term.

Peter and Santino are given some guidance by the YMCA, which has a contract with the US government to aid these immigrants. White Christian groups also welcome them. However, they are really on their own as these strangers point them in the right direction rather than taking responsibility for the young men’s assimilation and well being. They live in a rough section of Houston where the relationship with African Americans is sometimes to be robbed. This is a different type of black on black crime than they are used to. They feel strange around African Americans because most of them are brown while the Sudanese are, by their own description, "so black."

Peter became bored with repetitive factory jobs in Houston and life in general, so he moved to Kansas where he works and goes to school. He tries to make the high school basketball team, send money home to his family and find a girlfriend. Life is far more complicated than he expected. The customs are so different that he’s afraid that he does not know what to say to a young woman. African Americans girls often don’t know how to relate to someone who is their age that was born in the motherland. The white girls have the added complication of not being black.

Santino and Peter reunite at a YMCA retreat camp with other Sudanese immigrants a year after being in the US. Although they are quickly becoming Americanized, a positive difference between them and most African Americans is that they have not lost their culture. They may have been treated like slaves for their two decades of civil war, but it does not have the negative impact of the inferior/subservient mentality that one can get after 400 years of enslavement. This is what we think Bill Cosby was referring to when he spoke at a NAACP dinner about how many African Americans are wasting the opportunities fought for by those in the Civil Rights movement. One does not have to be a Clarence Thomas conservative to understand that equal opportunity does not guarantee equal results, nor should it. The playing field is level only if the individual makes a positive difference.

The film could have been better possibly by just being a little longer, by another 30 minutes. It would have been good to understand more about the efforts of these teenagers to find a female companion. We would have also liked to know more about the selection process of who becomes a legal immigrant. There are more than 14 million refugees in the world and in 2001, the USA accepted 70,000. Both are large numbers. We have no idea how people are selected but it appears that to some degree it is like applying for a job. You must be screened.